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Marvel's Thanos and Death are inextricably tied together - in the MCU, it's the billions of people dying with his Snap, but in comics, it's the actual character of Death, who he has an actual romantic relationship with. When it came time to translate that to the MCU however, that didn't make it in the movies we saw - but it was something that MCU had been planning on for the six years between 2012's The Avengers and 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, as Thanos creator Jim Starlin revealed to us that Death (and other cosmic entities) were in the early scripts for the third Avengers movie.

 "I have talked to the scriptwriters, and in their original version they had Eternity and all the other abstract entities showing up," Jim Starlin told Popverse's Joshua Lapin-Bertone. "Feige felt the moviegoing public wasn't ready for the abstract entities, so Mistress Death was pulled out."

Death's pairing with Thanos was mentioned in his debut in the Avengers post-credits scene, with writer/director Joss Whedon later confirming it was intentional while not putting future Thanos storylines into a corner. Brolin himself talked about plans to include Death back in 2014, but when it came time to explain Thanos' motivations it was changed to be about generally a culling of the universe. 

"They took something out of a Silver Surfer story that I wrote to be his motivation instead. It worked," said Starlin. "I've come to realize that you don't get a carbon copy of what you do in the books when it goes to the movies," said Starlin. "You would be fooled to think you're gonna get that."

Both Death and Eternity did eventually join the MCU. Eternity was glimpsed in Guardians of the Galaxy and made their full-on debut in the climax of 2022's Thor: Love & Thunder. Death got fleshed out (or is it boned out?) as Aubrey Plaza played her in 2024's Agatha All Along. In that series, Death was in a romantic relationship with the titular hero, but you gotta believe Death isn't monogamous - in romance and in life. 

You can read our full interview with Jim Starlin here.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters